5 Reasons People Smoke Recreational Weed

There are way more than 5 reasons people use marijuana recreationally.

It doesn’t matter if it’s because MMJ patients don’t get to keep their guns or because you don’t want a paper trail. Some people use weed without getting a medical card. We call these people recreational users and believe these are the top 5 reasons they smoke weed.

While medical patients smoke weed to cure cancer or leukemia, recreational stoners usually smoke for one of the 5 reasons on this list. Some may buck the trend and not conform, but I hope these modern day unicorns are compelled to let us know in the comments how they diverge.

Chilling out

Modern life is full of bullshit that you kind of have to deal with. Mouthing off at work will get most people fired which leads to a host of bad experiences. But that doesn’t make dealing with the crap coming your way any easier. Without a release valve, tension builds until you want to explode at something.

So people smoke to help them deal with the stress of things like exams, getting a divorce or a hard day of work. These people decide to smoke weed instead of lash out destructively in other ways. In a day when a diploma increasingly requires bullet dodging abilities, having a non-violent way to unwind that won’t destroy the body is pretty attractive.

Improving media

Everybody knows that smoking weed makes most movies better. Plays, operas and concerts also benefit from toking on some sticky icky. Getting high makes short term memory pretty much worthless. But this is a benefit because it allows you to experience a familiar event as though it were new.

Do you remember what it was like to hear your favorite song the first time? How about a joke so dumb you can’t stop laughing at how bad it is? Now imagine getting that experience over and over and you will begin to understand. Weed makes bad movies hilarious and great movies bend minds in the best of ways.

Dealing with annoying people/situations

We all know that one person who makes your blood boil just by being in the same room as you. We’ve all also wondered if we should smoke before dealing with a terrible situation you simply need to be present for. High stress situations like visiting in-laws or getting a roommate dealing with ‘personal space’ issues often demand a level of calm unavailable to an active mind.

Instead of spending the entire party thinking about how you want to even the score, getting high can give you the ability to simply think about something else. It’s hard to be mad at someone when your thoughts are consumed with the fact that cheese is just moldy milk. Especially when you start trying to figure out to turn expired milk into cheese.

To get off something else

People will try all sorts of things to get over an addiction. Most treatments perform little better than chance. But amazingly, recent scientific studies show that cannabis significantly promotes opioid addiction recovery.

The effects are strongest when the weed is dosed out by doctors instead of by drug dealers. But even the seeds and stems peddled by the U.S. government show signs of actually helping people. The anecdotal evidence for getting off common vices like cigarettes and alcohol is also pretty compelling.

Because it’s better than other drugs

There are a ton of drugs on the market. MDMA, crack, cocaine, heroin, oxycodone, caffeine, and a million others constantly compete with weed for users. But marijuana beats them out for several reasons. The biggest reasons are that weed is cheaper, less harmful, easier to get a hold of and can be dropped at any time.

The lack of hangover and ability to stop using at any time make weed especially nice. Unlike alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, prescriptions and club drugs, nobody has ever died from marijuana alone. So when times get tough, cutting out weed is as easy as not buying it.

Do you agree with our 5 reasons people smoke recreational weed? Know someone this list describes perfectly? It’s OK if you fall into more than one group. Let us know how this list stacks up to your experience in the comment section!

Adam is a glass collector, entrepreneur, artist, and fine cannabis connoisseur who loves to be engaged in creative projects and scientific research. He specializes in producing cannabis related content on a variety of platforms. Adam loves connecting with the cannabis community and collaborating with creators and businesses.

4 Comments

list seems baseless and inane. Stuff like this is exactly why the substance and its users are not understood critically. If we stop parsing out these needs for good vibes and positivity maybe we will actually know what this amazing plant does to people one day.

Moral high ground is exactly what opposition to marijuana takes in their arguments too and its getting us nowhere. My solution? lets start taking things seriously enough to stop making vague claims like “gateway drug” or “it improves media” .(it definitly doesnt, the movie is the same, youre different)

Hey Zach,
I hear where you are coming from and I appreciate that you want to have a serious conversation. We often don’t see our own faults until someone points them out to us. Even then, we can choose to accept and better ourselves or reject it and remain impervious to evidence or reason. But the two statements aren’t really equivalent.

Cannabis contains cannabinoids like THC and CBD that interact with the cerebrum but not the cerebellum or the brain stem. That is why you can’t OD from it. It simply doesn’t interact with the area of our brain responsible for our heartbeat or breathing. It does interact with the frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal lobes which govern functions like: emotions, spatial and visual perception, vision, and memory respectively.

Because THC stimulates and depresses these functions, we can empirically show that THC affects the subjective experience. But because of laboratory testing, personal experience and a process called the entourage effect, we know that different strains of weed actively produce a variety of effects in the brain. Those subjective effects include the interpretation of media like words, sounds and images.

The statement that weed improves media is specific. It’s also supported by a significant amount of scientific evidence that doesn’t go away when we spread some good vibes. But the statement that weed is a gateway drug can’t claim the same.

Tikun Olam in Israel recently published research that shows cannabis can help fight the opioid epidemic sweeping the nation. It makes more sense to treat it as a health issue (spending less money and keeping families together and in the workforce) than a criminal issue (meaning more arrests and prisons but less GDP). There is also significant evidence that federal rescheduling of marijuana would allow new breakthroughs in a variety of advanced fields like pharmaceuticals, construction and industrial fiber.

Yet entrenched interests in America block federal opponents of legalization like Attorney General Sessions refuse to recognize a multitude of scientific evidence that proving that marijuana is not a gateway drug. Despite a multitude of states joining the Green Rush, federal reform hasn’t made much headway. Maybe if we have more open conversations like this we can move the goalpost forward without coming off as preachy.

So thanks for commenting and sharing your views. I hope you were able to get something fun or information out of my work. I’m always open to constructive criticism if you care to let me know what you think about any of my other work Zach.

Glad to hear I hit the mark with you Dean. I really appreciate the feedback on my work and salute your 40 year toot. You must have seen some awesomeness in that time. I’ve only been toking for about 14 years or so. I got to be careful if I party hearty with someone of your vintage.

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